There's no such thing as a Muggleborn
by A plus
Summary: There's no such thing as a muggle-born," he told them. Lies have been used to cover up the truth. Hermione is tempted by the dark arts. Severus/Hermione Father/Daughter. Oneshot.


Harry stood outside the forboding door questioning his decision.

Finally he knocked and the voice from the other side called to him to enter.

He was halfway across the room by the time the man at the desk looked up.

"Potter. What could possibly bring you down here?"

"I need your help."

"I am doing enough favors for enough people. Get out."

But Harry didn't move.

"It's about Hermione."

Snape looked back down to the essays he was grading.

"Potter, there are plenty of teachers that can help you with your little personal problems. Your head of house, for example, or the headmaster."

"No sir, it needs to be you."

The older man looked up at this, trying not to let his concern show. Situations needing his involvement were never good situations.

"I think she's experimenting with the dark arts."

"Sorry, Potter, but you can hardly expect me to believe that Miss Granger would actually play around with the dark arts. Surely she knows better."

"I think she started looking through some of the books at Grimmauld Place to find something that might help me. You know how she is with books, you know her curiosity, well, I think it's getting deeper than that…I thought maybe if she spoke with someone who understood their allure."

"Fine. Bring her down here tonight. Tell her that I wish to speak with you both."

Harry and Hermione arrived in his office that night as expected. He seated them in chairs in front of his desk.

"It has come to my attention, Miss Granger, that you have been experimenting with the dark arts."

The glare she shot Harry was pure murder.

"I've been reading some books, but surely there's no danger in that. I would know better than not to stop before it's too late."

Her glare was now on Snape. She knew his past and wasn't above shoving it in his face, suggesting that she wasn't dumb enough to be sucked in as he had been. However, the dark circles under her eyes and the subtle aura of dark magic around her suggested the opposite. He stood behind his desk.

"Before we discuss the problem at hand, there are some other things you should know, some things that might come as quite a shock to you both."

They nodded their heads with a mixture of fear and curiosity, but in no way prepared for the bombshell he was about to drop on them. Albus would kill him if he ever found out what he was about to tell these two students.

"There is no such thing as a muggle-born," he stated bluntly.

Harry and Hermione both looked shocked for a moment.

"I knew you were a death eater, but I never knew you actually believed that insane propaganda," Hermione said coldly.

"It's not propaganda, it's genetic fact. In order for magic to be passed on, at least one parent must have magic."

"My mother was muggle-born," Harry challenged.

"Muggle-raised," Snape said calmly, sitting back down at his desk, "but not muggle-born."

Both teenagers just stared at him.

"It is common practice for pureblood families to hide squib children in the muggle world so that they don't have the shame of a squib put on the family. Sometimes, however, conclusions are drawn too quickly and children who were given away as squibs for not showing magic later turn out to be very powerful witches and wizards. Wizards such as Dumbledore allow these children back into the magical world, simply explaining their presence as being muggle-born."

"You understand why the purebloods want the 'muggle-borns' to be excluded from magical society? It's dangerous for them, dangerous that their secrets might be discovered, dangerous that they have heirs that were not raised under their control. This practice is…fairly common. Why do you think so many wizards are only children? Many wizard couples only manage to produce one magical child."

"My mother…" Harry started, unable to finish.

"Yes, Lily. The Blacks always did like to name their children after flowers as well as stars. Petunia is your aunt's name?"

"The Blacks?"

"It is my belief that the Black family had five daughters, not three. Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa, Lily, Petunia. The two youngest were given to a muggle couple whose memories were altered into believing the girls were their own. However, the elder of the two turned out not to be a squib at all, but a very powerful witch."

"I'm related to…"

"A lot of people, yes. Grimmauld Place would not have allowed to inherit it despite Sirius Black's will, unless you had some Black blood in you. He must have at least suspected that he and your mother were cousins."

"My birth parents," Hermione started cautiously, "they thought I was a squib?"

"There are…other reasons a wizard might give up a child to muggle society. Such as a child born outside of wedlock, a child they don't want anyone to know about. Your mother…"

"Is it someone I know?"

"Yes." She stared at him as if trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together.

"Magic is very powerful, Miss Granger, but your hair seems to be beyond its capacity to control. Can you think of any other witch who has a similar problem?" He raised his eyebrow as he watched her put things together.

She thought for a moment. It was true, most of the witches she knew used magic to make their hair perfect and silky and straight, yet with all her magical ability she could never quite keep hers under control…

"No!" she shouted suddenly, her head whipping up to look at the man seated across from her.

"No," she said again, but this time in a quiet whimper.

"Hermione?" Harry said, looking towards he with a concerned expression on his face.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," she whispered and then put her face into her hands.

"Very good."

This explained so many things. This even explained why Harry always had felt like a brother to her while Ron never did. Harry was her cousin.

"And her father is Rodulphus Lestrange then?" Harry asked.

"No. She became pregnant before she was to be married to him."

"Then who?" Harry asked.

Snape remained silent for a moment.

Hermione raised her face out of her hands and looked at him.

"It's you, isn't it."

"Why would you think…" Harry started, but Hermione interrupted him.

"There's only one person in the last few hundred years who had test scores anywhere near mine."

"Very good, Miss Granger," he smirked.

"I cannot be the daughter of that psychotic woman."

"Bella was not always the way she is now. When she was younger, at Hogwarts, she was…more like you. She was brilliant, powerful, but most of all, curious. It was her curiosity that led her to the dark arts. We were friends. I was naturally drawn to them as well and we snuck every book we could find, experimenting with darker and darker spells. We kept telling ourselves we could stop at any time, but the lure of them became too much. In the process, we became lovers as well. She became pregnant soon after we graduated. I'm a halfblood…she didn't want anyone to know about the child. She didn't want it to ruin her chances of marrying a pureblood wizard. She told me that she had found a muggle couple and modified their memories into thinking the baby girl was theirs. She married Rodolphus Lestrange not long after that."

"So you knew you had a daughter somewhere?"

"It was…part of the reason I agreed to teach at Hogwarts. I waited for the year when an intelligent young witch believed to be muggle-born would step into my classroom. When you were sorted into Gryffindor, I had my doubts, but with everything I've seen from you since then, I no longer do."

"If Bellatrix Lestrange is my mother and you are my father, how could the hat have possibly put me in Gryffindor?"

"Not everything you are is determined by birth. Your intellect, your hair, those are biological characteristics. But your kindness, your compassion, those you got from your muggle parents. It was because of them, because of how they raised you, because of who they raised you to be, that you were sorted into Gryffindor. Finding a good set of muggles to raise you was the best thing your mother could have done for you. They loved you. Had either Bella or I grown up in a household full of love, we might have turned out….more like you. But we didn't. Had the two of us raised you, rest assured that you would be a much different witch than you are today."

She nodded and looked thoughtful.

"Which brings us to your current problem."

She looked at him sharply, she had almost forgotten why he brought her there in the first place.

"You see now that both your birth parents had a natural inclination to the dark arts. I was able to pull away eventually, but your mother…. You see what you're risking now, how easy it would be for you to follow the same path she did. She was not that much different from you when she was your age. You need to be careful. You need to be very, very careful."

The two students got up to leave.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell either of you how much danger Hermione could be in if what I told you ever left this room."

"No, sir."

Harry slipped out the door, but Hermione hesitated a moment.

He looked at her.

"If you're really that bored with your studies and that concerned with helping Potter, maybe I could give you some extra lessons in the defensive arts and combat. Maybe it would help keep you out of trouble."

"I'd like that."

After the two teenagers had left his office, he poured himself a drink. This was never how he imagined telling his daughter that he was her father, but she had to know. She had to know the risks she was taking, what she was risking becoming. Albus would kill him if he found out. It put her in more danger from others by telling her, but hopefully she would now be in less danger from herself.

What he had not told her what that Bellatrix had not forgotten about the daughter that she gave up. In fact, she had repeatedly asked him if there had been any muggleborn students entering Hogwarts that could possibly be their daughter. He had always told her no. She knew he was lying, but could do nothing about it. It made her suspect his loyalty to The Dark Lord in general which was why she always tried to set him up, tried to expose him for a spy.

After months of training, the final battle finally came and Hermione was there at Harry's side. As he locked wands with Voldemort, his second-in-command attacked moved to separate Hermione, to kill her. They threw curses at each other until Hermione had the other woman's wand. She then fired a curse at the woman that slowed her heart until it stopped. It was a complicated spell. Bellatrix had underestimated her opponent. Obviously this girl was a powerful witch. In her last few moments of life, Bellatrix Lestrange realized that there was only one wizard she knew that had mastered that spell. If he had taught this girl, then he was a traitor just as she had always expected. The girl kneeled down and whispered in the woman's ear,

"My father taught me that one."


End file.
